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PRESENTED BY 


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Kaplan, Mordecai Menahem, 
1881- 

A new approach to the 









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A NEW APPROACH TO“LHE 
PROBLEM OF JUDAISM 


By MORDECAI M. KAPLAN 





THE SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JUDAISM 
NEW YORK CITY 


Copyright, 1924, 
The Society for the Advancement of Judaism 
New York City 


FOREWORD 


As adherents of Judaism, we are faced 
with a condition that does not let us live 
at ease. It compels us to readjust our- 
selves socially and intellectually. To 
leave that readjustment to chance is to 
invite moral chaos. We cannot afford 
to wait until a Sanhedrin, possessed of 
universal wisdom and representative of 
the multifarious shades of Jewish belief 
and practice, will agree upon some 
happy formula that will satisfy the 
whole of Israel. Nor do we look for- 
ward to any new gospel or revelation. 
There is only one way of saving Juda- 
ism, and that is to engage in associated 
endeavor with the avowed purpose of 
making Judaism function as a way of 
life. It is true, we have congregations. 
But membership in a congregation is 


prompted, for the most part, by the need 
III 


“to belong.” We must cultivate a type 
of collective effort which is impelled by 
a desire to advance the cause of Juda- 
ism. The two essays included in this 
booklet try to set forth the spirit in 
which a society for the advancement of 
Judaism must approach its task, and the 
prerequisites which such a society must 
meet, if it is to accomplish aught in the 
way of rendering Judaism a potent fac- 
tor for individual and social regenera- 
tion. 


IV 


CONTENTS 


A New Heart and a New Spirit...... 


The Meaning of Torah 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/newapproachtoproOOkapl 


A NEW HEART AND 
A NEW SPIRIT 





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A NEW HEART AND A 
NEW SPIRIT 


HE business principle that nothing 
NEY, succeeds like success has led many 


well-wishers of Judaism to make light 
of its present crisis. That principle is 
by no means infallible. There are occa- 
sions when nothing succeeds like the 

truth. That is especially true in matters © 
Spiritual. Judaism is far more likely to 
win out in the end, if those who speak 
in its behalf will have the courage to tell 
the truth concerning its present status, 
instead of inflating the significance of a 
few sporadic evidences of its function- - 
ing. The truth is that Judaism is dis- 
integrating. So rapid is the process of 
disintegration that unless it is stopped 
betimes Judaism will be past recovery. 


_ The most heartbreaking disillusion- 

ment which we Jews have experienced 

in our entire history has been the one 
1 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


following the removal of our political 
and civil disabilities. The least we ex- 
pected was that we would henceforth 
find it easier to be Jews. The fact is that 
it never was so hard to be a Jew as it is 
nowadays. 


The Emancipation has complicated the 
problem of Jewish living a hundredfold. 
We rejoice that we are no longer segre- 
gated from the rest of the world. But 
we have not yet learned how to prevent 
social contact and intercourse with the 
non-Jewish population from effacing 
our Jewish individuality. We have 
much more to apprehend from the 
changes that are going on in the social 
institutions and the thought life of the 
world about us than any other people. 
The new world outlook which merely 
shakes our neighbors out of their men- 
tal complacency gives our men of ability 
and influence an excuse for turning their 
backs on Judaism. The industrial revo- 
lution, which is forcing the rest of the 
world to abandon its ancient political 

2 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


and economic standards, is reducing the 
social organism of the Jewish people to 
a human detritus. And, when we add 
to the disruptive forces, to which Jews 
are subject in common with other 
eroups, the demoralization which must 
result from the mere uprooting of mil- 
lions and transplanting them from one 
continent to another, we begin to realize 
the unprecedented character of the 
problem of Judaism. 


In the meantime, the destruction of 
what we were wont to regard as Jewish 
traditions, Jewish standards of duty, 
Jewish ideals, goes on apace. Scarcely 
a Jew to-day but suffers from some kind 
of mental complex, usually the inferi- 
ority complex, due to spiritual malad- 
justment. The situation is becoming 
unbearable, and some way out must be 
found. There are those who choose the 
easiest way. They make up their minds 
to forget the Jewish past, to break with 
all Jewish associations, to immerse 
themselves completely in the life of the 

3 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


majority. We have no moral right to 
condemn such a course as cowardly and 
treasonable to the best interests of man- 
kind, unless we can prove that Judaism 
is equal to the task of liberating in the 
Jew the highest intellectual and spiritual 
forces that are latent within him. 


Judaism cannot possibly release the 
highest potencies in the Jew unless its 
teachings be made compatible with fear- 
less freedom of thought, and unless its 
institutions and practices are revised 
with a view to their utmost ethical effec- 
tiveness. 


WHY THE REFORM MOVEMENT 
HAS FAILED 


We are aware that the Reform Move- 
ment has tried to remold Judaism in 
accordance with those purposes. The 
leaders at least may be credited with a 
sincere desire to save Judaism from de- 
struction. Have they succeeded? The 
criterion of a successful Jewish reforma- 

4 


The Reform Movement 


tion would naturally be, Does it tend to 
make the Jew more Jewish? Who will 
venture to claim that result for the 
Reform Movement? It should not be 
difficult by this time to diagnose the fail- 
ure of the Reform Movement. Two 
factors have contributed to that failure, 
one negative and the other positive. The 
negative factor was the omission to pre- 
pare the laity for changes in Judaism. 
To be capable of adapting any social or 
Spiritual institution to new conditions 
of life and thought, we must evince new 
moral energy, an energy that expresses 
itself in a readiness for self-denial. Oth- 
erwise, convenience is liable to be given 
priority over principle. This has been 
the experience of the Reform Movement. 
It has allowed considerations of political 
and social status to dictate what shall 
or shall not be Judaism. It should have 
reformed the Jew before it attempted 
to reform Judaism. It should have in- 
spired him with a new self-respect. It 
should have disciplined him into a 
sterner regimen of Jewish duty, at the 
5 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


same time that it modified the content 
of Judaism. 


The positive factor that has contribu- 
ted to the failure of the Reform Move- 
ment has been its complete misconcep- 
tion of the nature and function of Juda- 
ism. Itclaimsthat Judaism's a religious 
system of life, a system which God has 
enabled the Jew to evolve for the good 
of mankind. To communicate that sys- 
tem of life is the Jew’s destiny and 
mission. That conception of Judaism 
involved changing the status of the Jews 
from that of a people yearning for its 
lost homeland into an international or- 
ganization at home everywhere. The 
function of that organization is to 
preach the unity of God, and to further 
the brotherhood of man. Such a mission 
would pledge us to active propaganda 
against trinitarian Christianity and 
against all forms of privilege and mili- 
tarism. If that were taken seriously, it 
would be more dangerous to be a Re- 
form Jew than to be the most violent 

6 


The Reform Movement 


radical. Only a few daring spirits would 
venture to belong to an international 
organization of that kind. By setting 
up an impossible goal for the Jewish 
people, the Reform Movement has re- 
duced Judaism to an absurdity. 


The failure of the Reform Movement 
should not daunt us from trying again. 
Since most adjustments in human life 
proceed by the trial and error method, 
we should not be discouraged because 
the first trial happens to be an error. 
By avoiding the two fundamental mis- 
takes of the Movement, we might hit 
upon a workable and satisfactory solu- 
tion of the problem of Judaism. 


Our first object must be to prepare 
ourselves mentally and morally for the 
necessary reconstruction of Judaism. 
We need a new influx of spiritual energy 
to be in a position to appreciate the 
implications of our problem. Unless we 
can get the Jewish layman to see in the 
problem of Judaism a challenge worthy 

7 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


of his highest powers of intelligence and 
will, nothing that rabbinical conferences 
or institutions of learning can do is of 
much avail. To manifest that interest 
in a perplexing spiritual problem, the 
Jew must effect a complete volte-face 
in his attitude toward the things of the 
spirit. Otherwise, all efforts to vitalize 
Judaism are like trying to get one to 
breathe in a vacuum. The time has come 
when the Jew must give heed to the plea 
of the prophet Ezekiel, “Make unto 
yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. 
Wherefore shall ye die, O House of 
Israel?” 


A NEW HEART AND A NEW SPIRIT 


To acquire a new heart and a new 
spirit means to make new demands on 
life. If we experience wants that have 
been unknown to us, if we miss things 
we never missed before, we are, in a 
sense, newly born. In the realm of 
things material, we are content with 
little less than the very highest stand- 

g 


The Hunger for Truth 


ards of excellence and comfort, whereas 
in things spiritual we are unduly modest 
in our demands. A minimum schedule 
is all that we legislate for ourselves, and 
in practice seldom live up even to that 
minimum. So long as we are smitten 
with a morally deadening wantlessness, 
we had better leave the problem of 
Judaism alone and attend to the Jew. 


As a prerequisite to the revaluation 
of Jewish values, we should begin to feel 
the gnawing pains of spiritual hunger. 
We are not asking for that rare quality 
of soul which is found only in those who 
are attuned to cosmic harmonies that 
escape the average person. The hunger 
which we regard as the forerunner of a 
revitalized Judaism is inherent in every 
normal man and woman, except that we 
fool it with unwholesome sweetmeats. 


THE HUNGER FOR TRUTH 


There are various manifestations of 
Spiritual hunger. Its most familiar ex- 
9 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


pression is the desire for knowledge, not 
of business, or of machines, but of 
human life, of nature, of the world, of 
God. How seldom one hears our peo- 
ple deploring the fact that they have no 
time or patience to read a serious book, 
or that they are unable to keep up with 
the march of thought! 


We have reached a stage where any 
large publishing house would hesitate 
to put out a book of Jewish interest, be- 
cause it is common knowledge that we 
do not read anything that deals with 
Jews or Judaism. There is not a single 
periodical of Jewish interest that could 
survive long, if it were not for anti- 
Semitism and the social column. Do we 
maintain even one publication that in 
dignity and seriousness is on a par with, 
let us say, the large number of Catholic 
and Protestant weeklies and monthlies? 
The “Menorah Journal,’ which is the 
one illustrious exception to intellectual 
aridity in Jewish life in this country, is 

10 


The Yearning for Faith 


forever struggling between life and 
death. 


There are, alas, too few among us who 
can be reached by an appeal to conserve 
our spiritual possessions. The general 
principle seems to be that a Jew to be 
worth saving must be stranded, sick or 
dying. Any movement that attempts to 
bring to our youth the knowledge of 
Judaism is doomed to inadequacy of 
support. At the present time, Jews have 
the opportunity of making important 
archeological discoveries in Jerusalem 
and other places in Palestine. We look 
in vain to our people to finance research 
expeditions and to give the Jewish schol- 
ars an opportunity to contribute to the 
knowledge of Jewish antiquities. 


THE YEARNING FOR FAITH 


Another form by which we identify 
spiritual hunger is the never-despairing 
hope to discover the inherent rightness 
and goodness of life. When we make 

11 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


that discovery we acquire the deep abid- 
ing faith, without which the soul knows 
no peace. Not every one is blessed with 
that faith, but we can all at least yearn 
for it. The yearning itself exerts a hu- 
manizing influence. 


If we have no longing for inward 
peace, if the very worth of a serene soul 
escapes us, what interest can we have in 
receiving from Judaism the gift of faith 
in a benign Power that shapes our ends? 
It is almost impossible to live in an occi- 
dental civilization, with its drive and 
headlong impetuosity, without being 
caught up and made to fall in step with 
its vast cohorts. That is all the more 
reason why we should yearn for that 
self-command which might enable us 
to hold back at times and let the swift 
procession, with its futilities and its 
ephemeral excitement, pass us by and 
leave us secure in the possession of our 
souls. Many of our people imagine they 
are following the American ideal of 
“the strenuous life’ because they are 

12 


The Awakening of Conscience 


“all nerves” about something or other. 
They have become ashamed of serenity, 
as though it were a sign of effeminacy 
or weak-mindedness. This caricature 
of the American ideal must give way to 
a desire to return to Judaism’s ideal of 
the simple life, to a life of inward calm 
and self-control. 


THE AWAKENING OF CONSCIENCE 


The same secularizing process that 
has led to the abandonment of the 
ideal of inward peace has, in a large 
measure, also dulled the edge of con- 
science. We live in an age when a 
powerful reaction has set in against the 
exaggerated sense of sin under which 
mankind labored in the past. But the lay 
mind is too preoccupied to draw the dis- 
tinction between removing the incubus 
of imaginary transgressions and de- 
stroying the very sense of sin. Having 
learned from hearsay that much of what 
was formerly regarded as sin was merely 
blind prejudice and unreasonable tabu, 

13 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


the average person readily jumps at the 
conclusion that sin is one of those anti- 
quated ideas that ought to be thrown 
into discard. 


Or, if our sensitiveness to sin has not 
been deadened quite to that extent, we 
have become adepts in the fatalistic 
philosophy that we are not our own 
masters. Armed with a few phrases 
about our helplessness and our inability 
to change either the world or human 
nature, we put conscience to sleep. Is it 
not evident that mankind would be 
thrust back into the chaos from which it 
has been painfully struggling to emerge 
if it were to lose the sense of sin? If the 
Jew is to play his part in bringing light 
and order into the world, he must rein- 
state the sovereignty of the conscience. 
As a prerequisite to such an achieve- 
ment, he must dread callousness to 
wrong-doing, and realize that moral in- 
sensibility is a form of paralysis of the 
spiritual nerve centers. To yearn for 
the stirrings of conscience, to be able to 

14 


The Awakening of Conscience 


pray devoutly with the Psalmist, “Cre- 
ate in me, O God, a clean heart, and re- 
new within me a steadfast spirit,” is an 
evidence that one’s soul is still alive. 


Furthermore, if Judaism has taught 
us anything, it should have imbued us 
with the truth that man is not only an 
individual soul, but also a member of 
society. Judaism denies us peace either 
with ourselves or with God, unless we 
live on terms of peace and co-operation 
with our neighbors. Let us be honest 
with ourselves and analyze to what ex- 
tent Judaism functions in our lives as a 
stimulus to fair play, to what extent it 
makes us revolt at extravagance that 
wastes goods and services whereby 
thousands might be kept from starva- 
tion. Does the Judaism we profess 
provoke us into rebellion against the 
orgy of materialism which places a 
higher value upon the production of 
things than upon the conservation and 
improvement of human life? Do we take 
the teachings of our prophets seriously 

15 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


enough to assume the slightest responsi- 
bility for averting the disaster which 
must come with the next war? Does 
Judaism really make us anxious, desper- 
ately anxious, to banish war from the 
earth? 


THE WRONG NOTION OF JUDAISM 


Are we, then, to infer that Jews are 
deficient in spiritual qualities, that their 
souls are less sensitive to the finer things 
of life than are the souls of their neigh- 
bors? Who will deny that a people 
which, under the most adverse handi- 
caps, furnishes modern civilization with 
a physicist that eclipses Newton, with 
a philosopher that dethrones Aristotle, 
with a psychologist that outstrips James 
and Ribot, with a host of poets, painters, 
sculptors and authors of first magnitude, 
that such a people is gifted with a 
greater share of spiritual capacity than 
any other nation upon earth? But the 
great misfortune is that practically none 
of that genius is applied to Judaism or 
Jewish life. To what is that due if not 

16 


Wrong Notion of Judaism 


to the erroneous idea which has been 
given currency that Judaism is a religion 
only, a matter of creeds and precepts, 
which you either obey or ignore, but 
which affords no scope for the wealth 
of intellectual and social interests that 
comprise modern culture. 


What does Judaism mean to the aver- 
age layman? A few stories from the 
book of Genesis vaguely remembered, 
the duty of believing in one God, keep- 
ing away from ham and shellfish, at- 
tending synagogue at least on the High 
Holy Days, and saying Kaddish after 
a departed parent. In the natural course 
of things even these few duties grow 
irksome. From that state of mind to 
the conclusion that Judaism is alto- 
gether superfluous is but one step. 


Is it conceivable that what is Judaism 
to most of us should have moved two- 
thirds of mankind to give up their own 
cults and worships, and acknowledge the 
God of Israel as the only true God? Are 

17 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


we to imagine that for the sake of the 
few misunderstood ideas and mechani- 
cal habits that comprise our conception 
of Judaism our ancestors braved exile, 
torture and death? Is it possible that for 
the sake of that unorganized medley of 
ill-digested doctrines, that for the spas- 
modic intermittent religiosity which we 
nowadays designate as Judaism, many 
more generations will be willing to en- 
dure the vexations and annoyances of 
being Jews? The prevalence of the dis- 
torted notion of Judaism accentuates the 
second fatal mistake of the Reform 
Movement. It is the Reform Movement 
that is largely responsible for that mis- 
conception, because it took a rich, 
cultural and social life and boiled it 
down to a platitudinous religious phi- 
losophy. Even if that philosophy had 
something new to say it could not be 
expected to make itself felt in the life of 
the ordinary Jew. We hardly need 
Reinach to remind us that you cannot 
have a people of fifteen million philoso- 
phers. 
18 


Wrong Notion of Judaism 


Moreover, Judaism is not a religious 
philosophy but a religious civilization. 
It is a cultural and spiritual complex of 
language, literature, history, customs, 
social institutions, organized about a 
conception of God which has the most 
far-reaching social and spiritual impli- 
cations for human life of all times. 


A civilization is a spiritual entity. It 
is the soul of a people. But as every 
Spirit is the spirit of something, and a 
soul, the soul of something, a civilization 
cannot subsist without a people. Hence, 
there can be no Judaism without a 
Jewish people. The conviction which is 
essential to being a Jew consists, accord- 
ingly, in voluntarily identifying one’s 
self with the living organism of the Jew- 
ish people. 


A literary critic proposes a fourth 
dimension to Criticism. Hitherto, Criti- 
cism has been wont to ask about litera- 
ture, “Is it good?” “Is it true?” “Ts it 
beautiful?” The critic suggests a fourth 

19 


~S 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


question, “Is it alive?” The same may 
be said of Judaism. It must be more 
than true, good, and beautiful. It must, 
first of all, be alive, and it is alive only 
to those who live it as a civilization. 


JUDAISM AS A CIVILIZATION 


Judaism is the spirit of a nation, and 
not the cult of a denomination. When 
we accept Judaism as a cult only, we 
consider it our duty to help maintain a 
synagogue, to attend services occasion- 
ally, and to refrain from intermarrying 
with non-Jews. But when we accept it 
as a civilization, we cultivate the know- 
ledge of Israel’s past so as to make that 
past an integral part of our personal 
memory; we dedicate ourselves to the 
furtherance of Israel’s career, beholding 
in that career our own personal future; 
we accept, as far as in us lies, the re- 
sponsibility for the material and spirit- 
ual welfare of all of world Jewry. To be 
a Jew in that sense is to be imbued with 
a Jewish consciousness that reaches 

20 


Judaism as a Civilization 


down into the secret places of the sub- 
conscious. 


At no time in the past was Judaism 
treated by Jew or Gentile as anything 
else than a civilization. The confusion 
as to the true character of Judaism is a 
by-product of the Emancipation. Out 
of fear lest we be charged with hyphe- 
nated loyalty to the country of which 
we are citizens, our timid leaders and 
teachers have tried to reduce the Jewish 
civilization to a cult. 


We now realize that their fear was 
totally unwarranted. The social and 
spiritual life of the normal human being 
consists of many loyalties. We are loyal 
to our parents, to our homes, to our 
friends, to our business associates, as 
well as to our country. It is only in case 
of conflict that the question arises as to 
which loyalty shall have precedence. 
But the Jewish people to which every 
Jew must give his allegiance is a people 
that has no raison d’étre unless it finda 

21 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


peaceful way of composing all its differ- 
ences with the rest of the world. Why, 
then, deny the true character of our 
spiritual heritage for the sake of im- 
possible contingencies? Judaism must 
remain what it was, the civilization of 
the Jewish people, or admit that its day 
iS OVEr. 


PREREQUISITES TO JUDAISM 
AS A CIVILIZATION 


There are, however, a number of con- 
ditions which must be fulfilled before we 
can think of Judaism in terms of a civili- 
zation. First, we must participate in the 
renascence of the Hebrew language and 
literature; secondly, we must give un- 
stinting support to all forms of Jewish 
scholarship; and, thirdly, we must accept 
the rebuilding of Palestine as the fore- 
most religious duty of the hour. 


CULTIVATION OF HEBREW 


No one who has the right instinct 
about the needs of Judaism at the 
22 


Cultivation of Hebrew 


present time can fail to note that the 
knowledge of Hebrew has become indis- 
pensable to being a Jew. The rabbinic 
precept that a parent must teach his 
child to speak Hebrew from early 
infancy must henceforth be the under- 
lying principle of Jewish education. The 
Jew to whom Hebrew is “Greek” is the 
father of an indifferent Jew, and the 
grandfather of an apostate Jew. There 
is something about the Hebrew language 
which gives the Jew a “Neshamah- 
Yethera,” an oversoul, for in that 
language are stored the joys and the 
sorrows, the triumphs and the defeats, 
the gropings after truth, and the struggle 
for the light, experienced by the Jewish 
people in the course of thirty centuries. 


Our problem is, to a large extent, how 
to get the “feel” of the Jewish people, 
how to visualize its reality. Ordinarily, 
it is a land that impresses us with the 
reality of a people. In the past we 
succeeded in keeping alive this sense of 
our people’s reality, even in the Dias- 

23 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


pora, by living segregated from the rest 
of the world. Men and women of the 
older generation still remember the 
Jewish Ghettos in which they were 
raised. That contact with Jews in the 
mass will keep them Jewish more than 
all abstract teaching and preaching. But 
what can we do to give our children 
whom we bring up in neighborhoods 
where one sees little of Jewish life a 
sense of intimacy with the Jewish peo- 
ple? The very term Jewish People is 
to them an abstraction. The only instru- 
ment at our disposal to compensate for 
the loss of Jewish contacts is the Hebrew 
language. When we teach the child a 
language, he instinctively senses the 
reality of the people to which the 
language belongs, and at the moment 
that he pronounces a word or sentence 
in that language he feels himself at one 
with that people. 


The Hebrew language can supply the 
element of unity that is fast disappear- 
ing from Jewish life. Until the Eman- 

24 


Cultivation of Hebrew 


Cipation, all Jews practically thought 
alike and acted alike. Such uniformity 
cannot be re-established, and, perhaps, 
would no longer be desirable, if it could. 
Yet, without something to hold together 
the different elements in Jewry, the 
Jewish people would soon pass out of 
existence. For a time, the pogroms may 
act as a unifying force. Or, it may be 
that Jews will federate locally to main- 
tain their poor. But is Jewish unity for- 
ever to be buttressed by suffering and 
poverty? Given, however, the Hebrew 
language, and all Jews will know them- 
selves as one people, no matter how they 
differ in mental background or religious 
belief. 


We were wont to glory in our past 
achievements, and to regale in dreams of 
our future; but what use are we making 
of our present opportunities? Mere de- 
pendence upon the past is spiritual para- 
sitism. Mere reliance upon the future is 
a spiritual gamble. Unless we possess 
the vitality to turn to good account the 

25 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


opportunities which the present offers, 
we may as well bow ourselves off the 
world’s stage. No one can gainsay the 
fact that Jews, as individuals, have taken 
advantage of the freedom to give full 
play to their powers, and that the num- 
ber of those who have achieved distinc- 
tion in life-walks from which Jews had 
hitherto been shut out is legion. What, 
however, have the Jews as a people 
done within the last hundred years to 
place beyond doubt their possession of 
spiritual energy? Have the Jews as a 
people created anything cultural or 
Spiritual since the days of the Emanci- 
pation? Is not the revival of the Hebrew 
language the sole proof that Israel’s 
vitality is still unexhausted? How 
abashed we should stand before the 
world to-day, if we had not the renas- 
cence of the Hebrew language to point 
to as a guarantee of our spiritual pro- 
ductivity, especially as we have created 
nothing which is specifically Jewish in 
art, ethics, philosophy or religion dur- 
ing the last century. 
26 


Cultivation of Hebrew 


The renascence of the Hebrew lan- 
guage is typical of the power of self-ad- 
justment which the Jewish people still 
possesses. It is the most incontroverti- 
ble evidence of the vitality of the Jewish 
spirit. Modern Hebrew has succeeded 
where Jewish law and ritual have failed. 
It has demonstrated the possibility of 
Jewish life remaining identical and con- 
tinuous while assimilating the best that 
there is to modern thought and civiliza- 
tion. Out of the ancient threads, mod- 
ern Hebrew has woven new textures 
of truth and idealism adapted to the 
intellectual and spiritual needs of the 
most progressive men and women of the 
present day. 


In the words of Zangwill, “Language 
is the chief index of life. As no man is 
dead so long as the mirror put to his lips 
reveals a breath, so no race is extinct so 
long as there comes from its lips the 
breath of speech. A people that speaks 
is not dead; a people that is not dead 
speaks.” 

27 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


THE TASK OF JEWISH SCHOLARSHIP 


A second prerequisite to the function- 
ing of Judaism as a way of life is the 
encouragement of Jewish scholarship. 
Recent developments in the thought 
world have made it necessary to place 
the stimulation of Jewish scholarship 
on a par with the renascence of the He- 
brew language and the upbuilding of 
Palestine. We refer to those develop- 
ments which threaten the continuity of 
Judaism. What makes Judaism con- 
tinuous if not the fact that our life as 
Jews is determined by our mind-pic- 
ture of Judaism’s beginnings? Until 
recently, it never occurred to us to ques- 
tion the truth of the mind-picture which 
tradition has transmitted to us. But 
with the advent of Higher Criticism, 
that mind-picture has been reduced to 
a dissolving view. So far, only the neg- 
ative conclusions of biblical scholarship 
have trickled through to the popular 
mind. Every tyro is ready to tell you 
that the spiritual genealogy of Israel 
has been impugned. Our Jewish intel- 

28 


Jewish Scholarship 


lectuals, who otherwise know nothing 
about Judaism, are somehow aware that 
the traditional account of its past has 
been challenged. Hence, it is urgent 
that Jewish scholars and_ thinkers 
throughout the world be immediately 
drafted to apply themselves to the task 
of formulating an intelligible, reliable 
and relevant account of the actual ori- 
gin and growth of Judaism. Only then 
will we be in a position to know what 
methods to employ in its further de- 
velopment. 


Our history falls into three millennia. 
As arule, Jewish scholars have occupied 
themselves with the last two millennia. 
We cannot be grateful enough for what 
they have done to give us a picture of 
Jewish life during the long night of 
Exile which, in most people’s minds, is 
remembered chiefly as fit material for 
lamentations. Their task is far from 
complete. The vast store of Genizah 
fragments and manuscripts of Jewish 
interest throughout the great libraries 

29 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


of the world are still waiting to be de- 
ciphered and interpreted. But of imme- 
diate importance to Judaism is the task 
of reconstructing the history of our 
people during the first millennium of its 
existence. It was then that our people 
was creative spiritually. That is the 
most significant part of the Jewish past. 
Our claim to spiritual achievement is 
based primarily upon what we accom- 
plished then. We can, therefore, ill af- 
ford to evade the issue which has been 
raised by Higher Criticism with regard 
to what actually occurred during the 
first millennium of our history. 


How shall Judaism meet the chal- 
lenge of Higher Criticism? Merely to 
protest against its methods and infer- 
ences on the ground that they are in- 
spired by hatred of Judaism will not add 
to the prestige of our faith. After all, it 
is that same method which, when used 
by scholars like Krochmal, Rappaport, 
Zunz, Graetz and Schechter, has brought 
to light episodes and personalities in 

30 


Jewish Scholarship 


Jewish history that had almost fallen 
intooblivion. Itishightime that Jewish 
scholars should not be afraid of know- 
ing the Bible. When Jewish scholars 
will know the Bible, the true story of 
the Jewish past will be told. And when 
that story will be told, the Jew will have 
no less reason to be proud of the Jewish 
past than were his ancestors who needed 
miracles and theophanies to convince 
them that Israel was the favorite of 
God. Other things being equal, the 
Jewish scholar is likely to have a keener 
and more sympathetic insight in mat- 
‘ters that concern the Jew than the Gen- 
tile scholar, and should therefore be bet- 
ter qualified to appraise at.their_ true 
worth the forces that made it possible 
for Judaism to play the great spiritual 
role in the history of civilization. The 
masses of the people may not at first be 
able to appreciate the untiring labor and 
devotion that is involved in restoring 
our spiritual genealogy. Let, however, 
the seminaries, the University in Jeru- 
salem, and other Jewish institutions of 
31 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


higher learning make solid contribu- 
tions to the knowledge of the Jewish 
past in all its manifestations, and the 
entire intellectual world will take notice. 
We would no longer be characterized 
as the pariah of the nations. And what 
is even more important, our own young 
men and women would regain their Jew- 
ish self-respect. One thing is certain: 
we would at last have an authentic 
account of the beginnings of the Jewish 
people which we would not hesitate to 
put into the hands of serious-minded 
Jews who, if they are to reckon with 
Judaism, want facts and not fiction. 


PALESTINE THE GUARANTEE OF 
JUDAISM’S FUTURE 


Most indispensable, however, as a pre- 
requisite to reckoning with Judaism as 
a civilization is to feel convinced that 
the Jewish people has a future. To be 
sure, the type of future upon which we 
can pin our faith is other than that for 
which our fathers yearned when they 

32 


The Upbuilding of Palestine 


found themselves in a state of helpless- 
ness. The future for which they hoped 
was scarcely of this earth. It was some 
dream of heavenly bliss which was little 
more than a psychic compensation for 
their deprivations and sufferings here 


on earth. They dreamt of a personal : 
Messiah coming on clouds of glory | 


amidst the trumpetings of hosts of an- 
gels, and of Israel being brought back 
to its ancient home by the nations of the 
world, who would repent of their rebel- 
lion against Israel’s God, and of their 
cruelty to His chosen people. In place 
of what, at best, is only idle dreaming 
and, at worst, nothing more than pious 
babbling, we should zealously strive to 
make Palestine the home of a Jewish 
civilization. The yearning to re-estab- 
lish the Jewish people must come as the 
logical consequence of a frank and hon- 
est facing of the fact that Judaism can 
no longer function, that it is certain 


to perish from inanition, unless it be 


rooted once again in the soil whence it 
sprang. 
33 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


If our interest in Judaism goes no fur- 
ther than to wish that there should al- 
ways be a number of individuals in the 
world who will be known as Jews, we 
may depend on it that our wish will be 
fulfilled. But if what we want is that 
those who will be known as Jews should 
enrich the world with their ideas, their 
ideals, and their example, and do so not 
only as individuals but collectively, by 
reason of their Jewish life, then it is 
futile to expect that kind of Judaism 
ever to thrive in the Diaspora, either 
here or elsewhere. That kind of Juda- 
ism is possible only where Jews can 
maintain their group life and social au- 
tonomy, and where, by reason of their 
being in the majority, they can enjoy 
cultural predominance. That kind of 
Judaism is feasible only in Palestine. 


A few dreamers, like Dubnow and 
Kallen, look forward to emancipated 
Jewry becoming socially autonomous 
in the Diaspora. This is as little possible 
as that the sun should rise in the 

34 


The Upbuilding of Palestine 


west. It presupposes that the Occidental 
nations will adopt the philosophy that 
the State is a federation of cultural 
groups. That runs counter to the trend 
of political development in most coun- 
tries, particularly in the United States. 
The case of the Poles, the Czechs, or the 
Irish is not to the point. They all have 
their own territory upon which they 
have lived as distinct nationalities for 
many centuries. And even they do not 
expect to develop their own culture any- 
where except in their own land. The 
Jews, however, can claim no territory as 
their own anywhere in the Diaspora. 
They must, therefore, become integrated 
with the various peoples among whom 
they live. The Jews cannot ask any 
nation, that on principle refuses to be- 
come acommunity of cultural or national 
communities, to reverse its policy. To 
become a nation of cultural common- 
wealths, America would have to forget 
her past and start life anew. And she 
dreads nothing so much, and perhaps 
justly, as to invite the dissensions that 
35 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


have convulsed those European com- 
monwealths which consist of multitudi- 
nous cultural groups. 


One must, indeed, be wilfully blind 
not to see the hand of Providence in the 
opportunity that has been given us to 
save Judaism at the very moment that 
the process of attrition is beginning to 
menace its existence. But to believe in 
Providence is to become its willing in- 
strument. And to become the instru- 
ment of Providence, we must strive 
zealously to make Palestine the home 
of a cultured, spiritual and progressive 
Israel that will evolve the kind of civili- 
zation which will be recognized by all 
as the kingdom of God upon earth. 


Twenty-five hundred years have 
elapsed since Ezekiel pleaded with the 
Jewish people, “Wherefore shall ye die, 
O House of Israel?” Apparently his 
plea was not in vain. Among the exiles 
that had wept by the rivers of Babylon 

36 


The Upbuilding of Palestine 


there were some, at least, who did not 
say, “Our bones are dried up, and our 
hope is lost.” The faithful remnant that 
did not know what it is to despair or 
surrender still survived. They did not 
sit with folded arms. They did all they 
could to save and augment the civiliza- 
tion they had brought with them. They 
took every possible measure to prepare 
Israel for a second chance to make his- 
tory in the domain of the spirit. When 
that chance came, it found the Jewish 
people possessed of a new soul that was 
forever rid of its pagan proclivities. 


The experiences we are passing 
through bear a strong resemblance to the 
experiences of our ancestors who were 
within hearing of Ezekiel’s voice. There 
are many among us, too, who say as of 
old, “Weare clean cut off from the House 
of Israel.” But there are still more who 
affirm, “I shall not die, but live and 
declare the works of the Lord.” They 
who have faith in Israel’s future will 

37 


A New Heart and a New Spirit 


give themselves no rest until the cause 
of Judaism will be bound up with the 
cause of human progress and idealism, 
and Israel will be ready to take its place 
for the third time among the peoples of 
the world as the standard bearer of a 
new spiritual civilization. 


38 


THE MEANING OF TORAH 


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The Meaning of Torah 


HEN we speak of Torah to the 
average Jew, he thinks of the 

large parchment scrolls that are dressed 
in velvet and adorned with silver crown 
and breastplate, and that are deposited 
in the synagogue ark built specially for 
them. He probably recalls his nervous- 
ness when he was honored by being 
called up to the “Almemar.” The fear of 
forgetting the benediction or making a 
“faux pas” in the Mi Sheberakh is still 
vivid in his mind. When we allude to 
“Talmud Torah,” which, literally trans- 
lated, means the study of the Torah, his 
mind goes back to some dingy Heder 
where little boys would rush in pell-mell 
to take their turns in reading a few 
verses out of a much-fingered prayer 
book or Bible. Those who still remem- 
ber Jewish life on the lower East Side 
connect the study of Torah with a grimy 
Beth Hamidrash, where a number of old 

41 


The Meaning of Torah 


men sway back and forth over large, 
exotic volumes of Hebrew text, repeat- 
ing in a quaint singsong some incompre- 
hensible lore. Such mental associations 
are little more than a caricature of the 
real significance that the Torah had for 
the Jew until recently. 


CULTURE AGLOW WITH PASSION 
FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS 


We have to go back to Jewish life of 
the past to appreciate what the Torah 
meant to the Jew. Torah then repre- 
sented all that we now understand by 
moral wisdom. It embraced everything 
that we now distinguish as history, 
poetry, religion, philosophy, ethics and 
law. It signified culture aglow with a 
passion for righteousness. The study 
of Torah was the worthiest occupation 
in which man could engage. No wonder 
that one of the ancient sages, describ- 
ing the Torah in Platonic hyperbole, 
said that when God wanted to create 
the world He followed the plan laid 

42 


The Passion for Righteousness 


down in the Torah, thereby making 
moral order and purpose the basic law 
of the world. 


Neither creed nor ritual of the most 
exalted kind could have saved the Jewish 
people from disintegration. If the 
Torah had not occupied the same place 
in the life of the Jew that culture occu- 
pies in the life of the modern man, the 
sole effect of persecution would have 
been to stamp out whatever idealism 
kept the Jewish spirit alive. It was a 
Spiritual inheritance which helped to 
develop in the Jew the highest human 
and social faculties. The Torah was the 
chief humanizing element in his life. 


From being synonymous with culture 
in its most comprehensive sense, Torah 
has shrunk for most Jews to a mass of 
antiquated writings which have no rele- 
vance to life. This is why only about 
one out of every five Jewish children has 
some inkling of what it is to be a Jew. 
This is why it is only the exceptional 

43 


The Meaning of Torah 


parent who takes an interest in the Jew- 
ish education of his child. This accounts 
for entire congregations not having a 
single member able to recite the benedic- 
tion over the Torah. To this miscon- 
ception of Torah we owe the ignorance 
of Judaism on the part of some of the 
most prominent communal leaders. 
This failure to appreciate the true func- 
tion of Torah is responsible for rabbis 
being compelled to become second-rate 
reviewers of the latest novels and plays, 
instead of first-rate Jewish scholars. 


TORAH AS LIFELONG MORAL 
EDUCATION 
A Torahless Judaism may hang on to 
life for a generation or two, but its end 
is inevitable. Hence, our problem is 
what to do to reinstate the Torah in the 
life of the Jew. To be sure, we cannot 
any longer expect the Torah to be util- 
ized by the Jew as the sole humanizing 
and civilizing agency. We may, how- 
ever, SO interpret its scope and function 
as to give it first place among the ethical 
44 


As Moral Education 


and cultural influences that shape his 
life. Why limit Torah to the study of 
texts, all important as those texts are, 
when in reality Torah represents a liv- 
ing and continuing process rather than 
a final attainment? Torah should re- 
mind us of the truth that Judaism can 
function as a way of life only so long 
as the Jew is engaged in a lifelong 
process of moral education. The 
duty of Torah should signify the duty 
of treating life as an art which it is our 
business to keep on perfecting. Like all 
arts, the art of life can be perfected only 
by taking thought. When our people 
will accept this larger significance of 
Torah, they will inevitably go back to 
the classic literature of the Jewish peo- 
ple; for, you cannot touch upon any 
phase of the problem of life without 
reckoning with the wisdom and experi- 
ence of Israel as embodied in our Sacred 
Writings. 


This truth that lifelong moral educa- 
tion is the paramount religious duty of 
45 


The Meaning of Torah 


the human being is far-reaching enough 
to constitute a world mission, if we 
are looking for one. No one takes us 
seriously when we boast that we are en- 
trusted with the mission to teach right- 
eousness. But if we were to adopt as 
our mission the learning of righteous- 
ness, we would, no doubt, render a much 
needed service to the cause of civiliza- 
tion. 


THE IDEAL OF TORAH AS APPLIED 
TO THE CHILD 

This conception of Torah would revo- 
lutionize most of our present notions of 
moral and spiritual education. It would 
open up new vistas, and reveal new op- 
portunities for the character training of 
our children. Instead of regarding the 
religious school, with its milk-and-water 
curriculum, with its namby-pamby 
moralizing, as the primary, if not sole, 
agency in developing ethical conduct 
and a wholesome outlook upon life, our 
eyes would be opened to the fact that 
there is not a moment in the waking 
46 


As Applied to the Child 


life of the child when he does not re- 
ceive impressions which determine the 
bent of his character. We would at 
once proceed to overhaul the religious 
schooling we give our children. We 
would demand that their religious 
studies should have relevance to their 
every-day life, and to the role that they 
will have to play as Jews and as citi- 
zens. We would make it possible for 
the Talmud Torah schools to engage 
teachers who do not adopt teaching in 
Jewish schools as a stepping-stone to 
more remunerative professions, but to 
whom imbuing children with a love and 
understanding of Judaism is a sacred 
calling. It would never occur to us to 
postpone the religious education of our 
children until a few months before their 
Bar Mizvah or confirmation, and then 
stuff their minds with a number of unre- 
lated historical facts, some creeds and 
moral truisms, or make them drudge for 
several months in learning how to chant 
mechanically a portion from Scripture. 
This is what many parents consider giv- 
47 


The Meaning of Torah 


ing their children a good Jewish train- 
ing. 


We should then learn to evaluate 
aright the significant part played in the 
shaping of our children’s character by 
the home environment and by their play- 
mates. If parents were aware how the 
most casual remarks and opinions which 
they pass about people exercise a greater 
influence than a good deal of formal 
instruction in ethics and religion, if 
parents realized that by their example 
they are apt to nullify the effect of the 
most efficient character training which 
their children might receive outside of 
the home, they would be much more 
wary of what they say and do. The 
choice of companions for our children 
on the basis of wealth would give way 
to choice on the basis of moral worth. 
We would probably lose the taste for 
social climbing; for nothing works such 
moral havoc upon children as the eager- 


ness of parents to shine in the reflected 
48 


The Discovery of the Child 


light of those that have more money 
than they have. 


THE DISCOVERY OF THE CHILD 


But by far the most important effect 
of the ideal of Torah upon our concep- 
tion of child training would be that we 
would begin to comprehend what the 
child means for the civilization of the 
race. Such appreciation would be tanta- 
mount to the discovery of the child. We 
may be said to discover the child when 
it dawns upon us that in the child God 
gives humanity a chance to make good 
its mistakes, and to fulfill its fondest 
dreams. As soon as we make that dis- 
covery, we place the child at the focus of 
all spiritual and social endeavor. This 
is in accord with the spirit of Judaism 
which has ordained numerous rites and 
moral provisions with an eye to the de- 
velopment of the child. The Torah is 
especially interested in having the child 
recognize the power of God. In placing 
such emphasis upon the proper upbring- 

49 


The Meaning of Torah 


ing of the child, Judaism proves its in- 
tuition of the child’s contribution to the 
development of human society. It is 
now recognized that the child, by means 
of his prolonged infancy, brought into 
being the institution of the family, 
which is at the basis of all civilization. 
It will, no doubt, again be the child that 
will serve as the stimulus to a peaceful 
reorganization of the social order on a 
basis of freedom and justice. 


In order that this may not remain an 
idle dream, the State, which now claims 
the prerogative of compelling and con- 
trolling the child’s education, must be 
made to discharge its educational func- 
tion in a manner that is conducive to the 
furtherance of the highest spiritual in- 
terests of the child. The ideal of Torah 
should compel us to place ourselves in 
the vanguard of every movement that 
would utilize the system of compulsory 
education as a means of bringing about 
a new day and a better world order. No 
civic duty can be more important than 

50 


The Discovery of the Child 


joining in the demand that every child 
be given an adequate schooling. We 
must urge that the public schools utilize 
their vast resources, their immeasurable 
opportunities, their rich subject-matter, 
to teach our children the art of living. 
The crusades that break out spasmod- 
ically to introduce, or to abolish, the 
mechanical reading of a few verses from 
the Bible are totally devoid of educa- 
tional import. It were far more honest 
and profitable to insist that the public 
schools should make a serious effort to 
cope with the problem of character 
training. 


Our children are taught history, geog- 
raphy, civics and kindred subjects ap- 
parently with the purpose of indoctri- 
nating them with the view that the 
status quo is the millennium, and that 
competition, intolerance, national boast- 
ing and bigotry are the last word in 
patriotic virtue. Educational authorities 
should be made aware that, more than 
anything else, parents want their chil- 

51 


The Meaning of Torah 


dren to acquire during the years of ele- 
mentary training the qualities of hon- 
esty, fair play, moral courage, and, 
above all, kindness and consideration for 
human beings, regardless of color, creed 
or nationality. This is the inarticulate 
prayer of every father and mother. If 
this prayer were heeded, our entire 
national life would undergo in a single 
lifetime a transformation such as all the 
religious bodies and all the social reform 
organizations would never dream of 
bringing about in a century. 


THE PROBLEM OF THE ADOLESCENT 


Assuming that the moral education of 
the child has been well taken care of, a 
new problem confronts us when the 
child passes into the youth. When the 
physical and mental powers mature, per- 
sonality, with all of its mysterious forces, 
comes into being. The phenomenon of 
adolescence, with its need for readjust- 
ing the ideas acquired during the years 
of childhood, is probably accompanied, 

52 


The Problem of the Youth 


especially in the case of sensitive youth, 
by severer mental struggle in modern 
times than was ever the case in the past. 
Adolescence, which spells a storm and 
stress period in the life of the Gentile 
youth, is nothing less than a dangerous 
crisis in the life of the Jewish youth. 
The former has only himself, his ac- 
quired habits and ideas, to contend with; — 
the latter has, in addition, a hostile en- 
vironment to contend with. 


THE PROBLEM OF THE JEWISH YOUTH 


The Jewish student is the Jewish 
problem incarnate. No wonder the Yid- 
dish writer “Sholom Aleichem” in dram- 
atizing his theme “It is Hard to be a 
Jew” took as his main character a Jewish 
student about to be graduated from a 
University. “Sholom Aleichem” gives 
us, however, only one half the story of 
that young man’s life when he depicts 
all his troubles as due to anti-Semitic 
prejudice. If he had penetrated more 
deeply into the young man’s soul he 

53 


The Meaning of Torah 


would have discovered a raging conflict 
of violent emotions. Inwardly, the Jew- 
ish youth is tormented by doubt as to 
the truth and worthwhileness of the re- 
ligious and moral ideals he had been 
taught, in his childhood, to respect. 
Outwardly, he is exposed to the baneful 
influence of evil companions who hold 
up his scruples to ridicule. His studies 
at college are by no means calculated to 
strengthen his faith in tradition and in 
the authority of moral standards. The 
college regards its task as ended when 
it imparts objective and scientific in- 
formation, and pays but little attention 
to the effect which that information has 
upon character. Thus left without guid- 
ance in the evaluation of the knowledge 
received, the young man converts his 
half-comprehended information into 
slogans that give sanction to all sorts 
of wild escapades. 


With no responsible Jewish com- 
munity or institution to make provision 
for the youth’s spiritual development 

54 


The Problem of the Youth 


during those critical years, what else is 
to be expected than that he should be 
graduated as a confirmed iconoclast, to 
whom nothing is sacred, who holds all 
virtue in derision, and who makes mock 
of piety and self-control? What use can 
he have for the Jewish people when he 
is convinced that Judaism is a misfor- 
tune? In fact, he is something of an 
anti-Semite himself. He cannot forgive 
his fellow-Jews the vexations and an- 
noyances that he had to endure on their 
account during his student career. His 
self-centered, materialistic and vulgar 
attitude toward life, in turn, furnishes 
the college authorities with a standing 
excuse for wanting to cut down the 
number of Jews at college. 


The experience which the Jewish stu- 
dent goes through is typical of what all 
Jewish young persons have to encounter 
in the various walks of life. They all 
come out from the struggle morally 
scarred. The iron enters their soul at 
an age all too young. Disillusioned 

55 


The Meaning of Torah 


sooner, by far, than other youths as to 
the sincerity of men’s professions of 
idealism and good-will, the Jewish youth 
becomes a hardened cynic. He adopts 
the swagger of the man of the world, 
and boasts of indulging his appetites 
without let or hindrance. 


It will be said that this attitude of the 
Jewish adolescent is confined to those 
who have received no spiritual training 
whatever in their childhood. This, how- 
ever, is not the case. The most conspic- 
uous instances of revulsion against reli- 
gion and morality will oft be found 
among those who, as children, received 
an intense and careful religious up- 
bringing. Many parents recall the re- 
markable piety which a son or a daugh- 
ter displayed as a child. They love to 
harp upon the eagerness with which 
their child would seize every oppor- 
tunity to recite a benediction, or to at- 
tend the synagogue. But as soon as the 
child grew up and left the parental roof, 
there was no trace left of that piety. 

56 


New Jewish Content Needed 


This almost universal experience of par- 
ents should by this time have taught 
them that nowadays the responsibility 
for their children’s spiritual develop- 
ment is augmented on the day that their 
children are confirmed or become Bar- 
Mizvah. 


The recognition of this fact, which is, 
in a sense, the same as acknowledging 
that Torah as a process of moral educa- 
tion must be resumed with greater vigor 
during the years of adolescence, imposes 
upon us a twofold task of stupendous 
proportions: One is to organize new 
subject material for Jewish youth edu- 
cation; and the other, to create the ma- 
chinery whereby Jewish education might 
be carried far into the years of adoles- 
cence. 


WE NEED NEW JEWISH CONTENT 


At present we are sadly deficient in 
both material and men. The material at 
our disposal is not in a condition to an- 

57 


The Meaning of Torah 


swer the practical need of inspiring and 
guiding youth. It has to be reorganized, 
reinterpreted and rendered palatable. 
Let me make clear what is meant by the 
need of new subject matter. Until re- 
cent years, there was no material in the 
field of Jewish history that might serve 
as a source of both information and in- 
spiration. Came along the Jewish his- 
torians, of whom Graetz is the best 
known, and created Jewish history in 
the modern sense of the term. The 
gathering of historical material has only 
begun. Even what we have has to be 
worked over into more tractable form, 
and presented with more careful regard 
for scientific accuracy and new social in- 
terests. And what is true of the outward 
facts of Jewish life is still more true of 
the norms and ideals of Jewish life. 
Seven hundred years ago Maimonides 
found it necessary to write “A Guide 
to the Perplexed’’ to deal with the out- 
standing philosophical problems of his 
day, and a compendium of Jewish prac- 
58 


New Jewish Content Needed 


tice to present in systematic form the 
duties incumbent upon the Jew. How 
much more are we, to-day, in need of 
systematic presentation of the case for 
Judaism, or of compendia of the duties 
essential to leading a Jewish life? 


More important even than the produc- 
tion of commentaries and adaptations 
of the ancient material of Judaism is new 
Jewish content. Such content cannot be 
made to order. Creative effort cannot 
be called forth at will. It takes the 
happy combination of favorable social 
conditions, urgent demand on the part 
of the people, and the presence of cre- 
ative genius to produce new cultural 
subject-matter. The modern Hebrew 
literature, which is the initial product of 
Jewish creative talent in modern times, 
is an indication of what rich literary 
content could be added to the treasures 
of Jewish thought, if there were the 
slightest evidence of popular interest in 
the cultural phase of Judaism. 

59 


The Meaning of Torah 


JEWISH YOUTH EDUCATION TO BE 
GIVEN PRIORITY 


The success in creating the agencies 
for the moral training of youth will, in 
the last instance, depend upon our hav- 
ing something to give them that will 
hold their interest by reason of its cul- 
tural value and relevance to life. We 
need not, however, wait that long. Much 
may be accomplished even with our 
present agencies, if the synagogues, Jew- 
ish centers, Y. M.H.A.’s and kindred 
institutions will give to the problem of 
Torah for the youth priority over all 
their other activities. The main object 
in providing Jewish educational facili- 
ties in any of these institutions should 
be to influence the youth spiritually and 
Jewishly. Young people’s classes in re- 
ligious and ethical subject-matter should 
be established everywhere. Rabbis and 
educators should be exempted from 
many of the social duties and needless 
speechmaking, so that they might de- 

60 


Re-education of the Adult 


vote the greater part of their time and 
ability to the task of educating the 
youth. By these and similar means we 
might succeed in making the duty of 
moral re-education during the years of 
youth a practical norm of Jewish life. 


RE-EDUCATION OF THE ADULT 


With all that the youth may have 
learned about life and its duties, by the 
time he attains manhood and has to 
make his place in the world, he is face to 
face with situations that do not seem to 
fit the rules and principles which he has 
come to accept as authoritative. Every 
day brings with it some variation, at 
times slight, at others pronounced, upon 
what he had been taught to regard as 
the usual course of life. When that oc- 
curs, what is there to guide him in ad- 
justing himself to the niceties of each 
new situation as it arises? Now that he 
has to shift for himself, life is no longer 
a matter of theory and abstract ideals, 
but of concrete and oft harsh realities 

61 


The Meaning of Torah 


which are apt to render him oblivious to 
all the delicate weighings of right and 
wrong. Hence, Judaism’s behest that 
Torah be the occupation of the man no 
less than of the youth or child. 


Joshua, long past the age when he 
acted as aide-de-camp to Moses, and 
about to embark on his life’s task, was 
commanded, “The book of the law shall 
not depart out of thy mouth, but thou 
shalt meditate therein day and night.” 


These words imply that in waging the 
battle of life we should consult the 
teachings of the Torah. The real op- 
portunity to reckon with those teach- 
ings arises when we are engaged in the 
business of living. The Jew, therefore, 
to whom Torah signifies the call to a life 
of social responsibility enters upon a 
second stage in the process of re-educa- 
tion as soon as he takes his place in the 
world of practical affairs. The mere 
reinterpretation of traditional views in 
terms of the modern world outlook is 

62 


Re-education of the Adult 


not enough for the contingencies of the 
workaday world. What the individual 
man or woman needs now is to know 
how to apply the general principles of 
religion and morality to the specific sit- 
uations as they arise from day to day. 


We must always be at school. Itisa 
mistake to believe that once a person has 
received a considerable amount of for- 
mal instruction as to what is right, or 
has been brought up in an ethical envi- 
ronment, he can be relied upon to do the 
right thing without further thought or 
study. Virtue which represents nothing 
more than the momentum of early train- 
ing is liable to exhaust itself in pious 
wishes which never bear any fruit in 
action. There are always enough new 
problems that come up from time to time 
in the home, in the shop, in the office and 
in the market-place that render all prece- 
dents inadequate and that demand 
deeper insight and greater initiative 
than can come from mere habit. 

63 


The Meaning of Torah 


This second stage in the moral re-edu- 
cation may take the form of detailed 
study and discussion of the specific ethi- 
cal or spiritual problems which we en- 
counter in our daily work and dealings 
with others. We should learn to take 
counsel together, in order to know how 
to translate the desire to do what is right 
into the actual terms of the new situa- 
tion that we confront. No ethical prin- 
ciple is of much value at this stage of 
mental development, unless it come 
down to earth. It should deal with the 
relations of employer to employé, of pro- 
ducer to consumer, and of buyer to 
seller. It should go far enough to help 
in the fixing of just prices and in the de- 
termination of a fair scale of wages. It 
should throw light upon such a problem 
as that of engaging and dismissing 
labor. It should aid in deciding what is 
legitimate and what illegitimate in our 
methods of attracting trade. There is 
adequate ethical material in our domes- 
tic life for “Sheeloth and Tshuboth,” the 

64 


Re-education of the Adult 


kind of “responsa”’ Judaism will have to 
produce in the future. The professional 
callings, no less than business, are in 
need of having the ideal of service trans- 
lated into concrete “Thou shalts” and 
“Thou shalt nots.” Wherever such 
codes have been formulated, it should 
be the function of Judaism not only to 
make a gesture of assent, but to urge the 
conscientious conformity to those self- 
imposed standards. 


At first sight, it seems that our per- 
sonal conduct scarcely affords enough 
material for continuous study. The 
greater part of it is so routinized that 
there appears to be no place in it for 
moral reflection. This is the very rea- 
son most of us after twenty vegetate 
spiritually. If we were accustomed to 
subject our conduct more frequently to 
intelligent scrutiny and judgment, we 
would discover that it possesses aspects 
which might enlarge our mental and 
spiritual horizon. 

65 


The Meaning of Torah 


TORAH AS ENLIGHTENED OPINION 


Moral education is not meant to be 
confined to social and spiritual problems 
which fall within the narrow range of 
personal experience. Our actions are 
determined by the opinions we hold con- 
cerning matters to which we are related 
merely as spectators. Nothing human 
should be foreign to the one that studies 
life from the standpoint of Torah. Study 
which embraces every human interest 
enables us to exert a healthy influence 
upon public opinion. The understand- 
ing of the economic, political and social 
issues of the day from an ethical point 
of view is conducive to enlightened 
thought and action in human society. 
The invisible force of public opinion is 
a deciding factor in the fate of nations 
and empires. Whether human society 
is to be plastic to the ideals of its seers 
and prophets depends upon enlightened 
opinion, the only remedy that will save 
humanity from all forms of mob hys- 

66 


Torah as Enlightened Opinion 


teria. But enlightened opinion is pos- 
sible only when we are armed with 
adequate information, and when we are 
trained in properly sifting and apprais- 
ing the facts at our disposal. Both of 
these requirements make it incumbent 
upon us always to be students of human 
nature and of worldly affairs. 


The re-education of the adult does not 
necessarily have to be carried on by 
means of formal study. Unless it as- 
sume the form of recreation, it is not 
likely to be carried on at all. We 
should acquire the habit of reading 
not merely for the sake of killing time, 
but to become better informed as to 
what is going on in the world of thought 
and of action. Members of large fami- 
lies that come together frequently 
should once in a while replace their small 
talk with reading from some of the 
world’s great literary treasures. They 
might stumble in that way upon the lit- 
erary treasures of the Jewish people. 
The custom of arranging costly card 

67 


The Meaning of Torah 


parties, which is in vogue in many of our 
homes, might be interrupted at times 
by gatherings at which, under proper 
leadership, a matter of vital import to 
the life of the nation would be the topic 
of discussion and reading. Is it too vis- 
lonary to expect that Jewish men and 
women of average mentality should for 
a moment consider breaking with their 
deadening routine of futile activities and 
pleasures? Nothing that ought to be is 
impossible. With this as a basic as- 
sumption, Judaism has been able to 
achieve wonders. 


Informed discussion, even of matters 
that have but an indirect bearing on 
personal conduct, has a profound moral 
value. We can accustom ourselves to 
find as much interest in discussing the 
League of Nations, the race problem in 
America, or the outlawing of war, as 
in dilating upon swinging a golf stick, 
the intricacies of bridge or mah-jong. 
Discussion of political and social prob- 
lems has long ago been recognized as a 

68 


Torah as Enlightened Opinion 


potent factor in civilization. In olden 
times Socrates, and in modern times 
Bagehot, advocated discussion as a 
means of clarifying our ideas and social- 
izing our activities. A people that lacks 
the capacity to discuss intelligently its 
every-day interests and problems is in- 
capable of self-government. Emotional 
condemnation alone will never cast out 
the war spirit that has taken possession 
of mankind. If that evil spirit is ever to 
be exorcised, it will come about through 
the conscientious study and frank dis- 
cussion of the great and terrible ques- 
tions that agitate the modern world. 


The success of ethical study and dis- 
cussion will depend upon our being able 
to identify them as Torah, and to ap- 
proach them with that same spiritual 
attitude as our fathers did the study of 
Scriptural and Rabbinic texts. If the in- 
struments of study, the personality of 
the teachers, and the atmosphere where 
such discussion is carried on are calcu- 
lated to inspire the heart as well as in- 

69 


The Meaning of Torah 


form the mind, we may look forward to 
the reawakening of literary activity 
among Jews that will exert as potent a 
spiritual influence in the future as the 
Talmud did in the past. 


“Then they that feared the Lord 
Spoke one with another; 
And the Lord hearkened, and heard, 
And a book of remembrance was written 
before Him, 
For them that feared the Lord, and that 


thought upon His name.” 
Mal. iii. 16. 


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